


When the Torchlight Thins

by glackedandmullered



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Imaginary Friends, M/M, Mental Illness, mention of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glackedandmullered/pseuds/glackedandmullered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Michael was 5 Gavin was his imaginary friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Torchlight Thins

**Author's Note:**

> Something that just came to me while I was on a long train journey with Circles by Passenger playing on my ipod.

They first met when Michael was 5.

Michael was playing in his back yard with toy trucks in the sand pit when the boy appeared behind him. He was tall and wiry thin with spiked up mousy brown hair and a hysterically large nose. He knelt on the grass, the damp dewy grass soaking stains into his denim dungarees that he wore on top of a striped blue and white shirt. 

“Hello!” He chirped, his accent something Michael had never encountered before and he dropped his trucks to the ground with his body facing the boy.

“I’m Gavin, what’s your name?” Gavin reaches out a tiny hand and, when Michael doesn’t respond, he grabs for the other boys hand on his own and shakes it once, firmly.

“I’m...Michael.” He stammers finally, he is still taken aback at having a kid just wander into his back yard. 

“Hello Michael, that looks like fun, can I play?” He gestures down at the trucks in the sand and Michael nods, handing one over. Gavin begins running the trucks wheels along the wooden borders of the sand pit making chugging noises and tipping handfuls of sand into the back of the vehicle; Michael forgets that no one invited this kid to his yard, he had no idea who this boy was but Michael didn’t care. 

He wasn’t one for making friends easily, he had a bit of a temper and a weird sense of humour for a 5 year old and the kids around his neighbourhood didn’t much enjoy playing with him. 

They play until the sun hits the centre of the sky and Michaels back starts soaking sweat into his t shirt, until Michaels Mom comes out with a glass of lemonade in her hand and ushers him back inside. He turns around to introduce his new friend to his Mom but instead there is just the sand pit, an empty sand pit with trucks laying amongst the grains and no Gavin. 

\---

When Michael was 5 Gavin was his imaginary friend.

His Mom didn’t much mind and his Dad didn’t very much care. He would spend hours in his room with Gavin. He would only need to think about Gavin and he would be there. They built up towering pillow forts that stretched from his door to the back wall, they turned off the big light and huddled under their comfy castle with flashlights gripped in tiny hands casting light across the sheets, Gavin taught Michael about Shadow Puppets and Michael taught Gavin how to make a catapult from a rubber band and a coat hanger. 

He doesn’t question how Gavin is always there, he figures it makes sense in some way or another and decides he doesn’t really care, If he tried to explain it he would be wasting precious time and there were better things to be doing.

One night Michael handed Gavin a pen knife from his Dad’s office, his Dad would be furious if he found out but Michael didn’t really care. 

They lay in the dark way past Michael’s bedtime; they pointed the flashlight at the space under Michaels bed and each carved a word into the wood panel. 

_Michael & Gavin _

Michael told Gavin that their friendship was forever now because whatever happened they would always be here, right in this moment they would stay. 

\---

When Michael was 12 Gavin was his excuse. 

An excuse not to go out and spend time with kids his age, and excuse to stay holed up in his bedroom with himself, an excuse not to do his homework. He doesn’t need any friends, Michael tells her, he has Gavin. All he would ever need is Gavin.

His Mom tells him he’s too old for this game, he should have grown out of it by now. He needs to get a grip and grow up and stop waking them up in the middle of the night with his stupid noises. 

Michael tells her that’s Gavin. Gavin is the loud one, he squeaks and squawks and it’s not Michaels fault, he can’t tell Gavin what to do. 

Michael got angry when his mom told him there was no Gavin. He kicked and screamed and throw his food at the wall. He bucked against his Dads hold when he tried to restrain him and kicked him in the shins before his dad got the advantage and threw him to the floor. He lay there for an hour after, blank eyes staring at the cabinets in front of him. 

Late at night he curls up under his bed and Gavin snuggles close letting Michael cry into his shirt and repeats 'I know, I know' into his ear as he hoarsely whispers 'you're real' through his tears. 

After that his mom takes him to the kid shrink in town. She was an old, wrinkled lady with greying hair and a snobby face. She shows him ink splatters on a page and tells him to say what he sees. He doesn't respond with what she wants but he responds with what he wants to see. After every card he says Gavin and the lady clucks her tongue. 

He goes to appointment after appointment, his Dad takes on an extra job to pay for it and his Mom starts getting real sad, he hears her crying in the night but Michael can't bring himself to care because Gavin sits with him and tells him it's all going to be okay. 

When a diagnosis finally comes Michael wants to run. He wants to throw everything he has into his backpack and never look back. He wants to hold Gavin's hand and let him lead him away into adventure. 

\---

When Michael was 16 Gavin was his hallucination.

He was merely a symptom of a disorder that had been present in Michael since the moment he was born. He was Michaels brain playing tricks on him and nothing else.

The shrink puts him on medication. A barrage of pills to quieten him and kill the voice and the face, to kill Gavin.

He goes 4 days on the pills before Gavin starts to stutter out of his consciousness. When he’s there he’s quiet, he perches on the window sill or on the edge of the bed and stares. Sometimes out of the window, sometimes at the wall, sometimes directly at Michael, boring holes into his soul.

One night he stands in his room, face red and voice hoarse and screams Gavin's name at the top of his lungs for hours and hours until his eyelids droop from exhaustion and he falls to his knees and whimpers the name into sleep. 

Gavin doesn't come. 

\---

When Michael was 18 he started doing anything and everything he could think of to bring Gavin back.

He had long stopped the pills, he threw them up after his Mom left the room, he spat them out when she turned her back, he learnt the method behind cheeking them and became grateful that she was not more observant. 

But, no matter how hard he tried, Gavin wasn’t there.

He deprived himself of sleep for 5 days straight hoping to induce a visit before his mom had him sedated in a cold hospital room. In his dreams Gavin is there, he is all smiles and joy just as Michael remembered and they hold each other close until the drugs wear off and Michael must snap back to reality. 

Then he begins craving nights in his drug induced world which is why he finds himself late at night in alleys and side streets trading food money from his mom for whatever drug he could get his hands on. He learnt that he got very different results from each drug that bled into his system.

LSD gets him bright colours and loud laughter and dancing into the early hours of the morning to music he can't guarantee is there. 

Cocaine has him climbing on railings and walking a tightrope with Gavin dancing a ballet across the metal bar. 

On Cannabis they lay under a violet sky on glistening soft grass as stars and comets shoot across the horizon setting the air alight. 

It all ends the same way. With an empty room and a headache and a gnawing desperate itch under his skin. 

He stands on rooftops and dares Gavin to save him, he raises a foot off the concrete and a firm hand pulls him back. There is no one there when he turns to look but he knows what he felt, he knows it was real. There’s a time in the gun range, someone he had met once told him he dealt with his anger at this place, there’s something calming about holding something so deadly, so dangerous you could end a life with a single twitch of the finger. 

He holds it up to his head and a calm hand pushes it down, skin touching skin as he lowers the gun with a weak whispered _no_. The owner kicks him out and threatens to call the cops.

He wanders aimlessly for months, feels the harsh bite of winter in the nights when he sleeps in doorways and the jagged rocky path under his exhausted feet when his shoes begin wearing down through the soles. 

He wanders and in all that time there is no Gavin to be found. He thinks he hears him sometimes, in the voices of people passing by and he thinks he sees him on street corners but nearly a year passes and there is not even the hint of a ghost to calm Michaels fears.

When his parents decide to sell the house and move away he drags himself home long enough to see the place one more time. He walks the floors he once walked hand in hand with Gavin, he peers out over the back yard where they had first met, then he visits his room. He pulls the bed away from the wall, it has remained in the same place for 20 years, the wallpaper behind it is bright and clean compared to the sun bleached colours of the rest of the room. He kneels down and drags his hand along the wood skirting at the base of the wall until his hands touch bumps and cracks. 

He looks down. Childish scrawl carved into time but it wasn’t as he remembered. 

_Michael &_

Reality hits Michael hard and it takes 10 more years before he can accept the truth of it all. 

Gavin was never real.


End file.
